Curt Samo totes a wide assortment of crawfish-imitating offerings everywhere he goes, having found that mimicking a craw properly often is the key to putting fish in the boat.
A crawfish trap might seem like an odd item for a professional bass fisherman to carry in the back of his truck. After all, only artificial lures may be used in bass tournaments. However, Illinois pro Curt Samo considers his little wire trap a valuable research tool, and he doesn’t leave home without it.
Knowing crawfish are highly important forage to largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass in rivers and lakes throughout the country, Samo relies heavily on crawfish imitations in his approach to tournament fishing. Wanting to “match the hatch” effectively, he typically traps a few crawfish during practice at any lake he visits, just to see what the local mudbugs look like.
Various species and strains of crawfish come in a wide assortment of colors, and any even craws of the same kind can look quite different from one waterway to another. Water color, season and forage are just a few of the factors that can influence craw coloration.
Samo’s main tools for imitating crawfish are YUM soft-plastic baits. Some of his favorite specific offerings are YUM Wooly HawgCraws, CrawBugs, Baby CrawBugs and YUM Chunks, which he puts on BOOYAH jigs.
Samo varies specific offerings based on the cover, the type of presentation he wants to make, the size of fish he is targeting and the appearance of the crawfish he finds in his trap. He’ll also mix up his baits any given day, allowing the bass to show their preferences.
The Wooly HawgCraw has a ribbed body and a “creature” appearance, with paddle-shaped appendages, claws and antennas. A slender profile allows for great cover penetration, which is important to Samo, who likes the HawgCraw best as a flippin’ bait. Crawfish abound in shallow grass, so he wants an offering he can punch through the vegetation. By using an Excalibur Tg weight, Samo can get a HawgCraw through just about anything.
Samo’s other favored flippin’ bait, which he typically turns to when he is targeting large bass, is a Booyah Boo Jig matched with a YUM Chunk. The chunk has long, flat claws, which slow the offering’s fall, while at the same time giving it larger profile and a natural crawfish appearance.
For fishing around rock, Samo likes a CrawBug or Baby CrawBug. The CrawBug is a craw-shaped tube and is ideal for dragging across offshore reefs or bouncing down rocky points. The Baby CrawBug has a small tube-design body, similar to the smallest CrawBug; however, its tail end consists of short worm section, so it can be used as a jig trailer. The same design element makes it great for fishing on a plain jighead in finesse situations.
Of course, all of Samo’s favorite crawfish imitations come with crawfish-flavored YUM Live Prey Technology. While he never strings a hook through the crawfish that end up in his trap, Samo comes awfully close with the baits he selects.